Interviewing the Dead

by David Field

  That proved to be an optimistic prediction and it was Adelaide who opened the mortuary door with a sour expression. ‘Come in quickly, take a seat and don’t touch anything,’ she instructed Matthew brusquely as she went back to her bench and continued the work she had temporarily interrupted, which seemed to consist of warming a glass container over a naked flame and shaking it occasionally to examine the liquid that seemed to become a darker shade of pink every time she did so.

  Jennings had taken himself off and the two of them were alone in the laboratory, which Matthew was relieved to notice contained no dead bodies. Although, he reflected nervously, it might contain his before much longer and he was already regretting his enthusiastic offer of the previous day.

  ‘I’d offer to make you a mug of tea, only my father advises me that you’ll be getting one shortly anyway, as soon as this additive’s reached its operative density.’

  ‘He told you that I’m to become your latest laboratory animal?’ Matthew asked of Adelaide’s back as she bent over the gas flame.

  She snorted. ‘I, for one, will welcome the substitution. We had to stop using rats and rabbits because I got too fond of them and that’s hardly likely to happen in your case.’

  Suitably crushed, Matthew allowed his eyes to wander around the mortuary, at the shelves, bottles, gas burners, trays of instruments and other paraphernalia with which the place was equipped. Seemingly through no conscious volition he found himself staring at Adelaide’s back as she pored over her work in her smock, cap and rubber boots.

  Suddenly, without turning round, she said, ‘Stop looking at me. It’s off-putting.’

  Matthew replied, ‘What makes you think, in your arrogance, that I prefer to look at you, when this laboratory is filled with other things of far greater interest?’

  ‘You forget that I’m facing a row of glass bottles and that your face is reflected in them,’ she replied.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be concentrating on that witch’s brew in the flask? What’s putting you off your work is watching my reflection in the glass, so don’t seek to blame me for your inattention to your duties.’

  It was a considerable relief to Matthew when the door opened and Carlyle breezed in. ‘It was definitely worth the coach journey to my uncle’s literary legacy — I think I know what our poison may be!’ Then he seemed to remember something and he turned to Adelaide. ‘I hope you’ve kept our brave young friend here entertained?’

  She turned to Matthew and replied, ‘Amused, anyway.’

  ‘So what exactly is this pink stuff that I assume is what Miss Carlyle has been preparing over there?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘Unless I’ve got it all horribly wrong, it’s a Mexican cactus called “Peyote” which is much favoured by the natives of that region in order to promote religious ecstasy. You cut down the flowering heads, seemingly, then you farm the regrowth from its roots. It may then be crushed into small balls, almost like medicinal capsules and consumed either by chewing, or — and this is of the greatest significance to us — mixed with liquid, in which it is soluble. I am advised, from what I read, that it is revoltingly bitter to the taste, but that if sufficiently diluted it can be masked by other strong substances. Let us hope that hot sweet tea will suffice, if you’re still brave enough to act as my patient in this ground-breaking experiment.’

  ‘Of course,’ Matthew replied with more confidence than he felt. However, with Adelaide watching him intently from the side bench, he was hardly about to demonstrate any cowardice and he forced a reassuring smile to his face when Carlyle invited him to lie down on the dissection slab.

  ‘It’s been thoroughly cleansed since the last occupant left,’ Adelaide assured him, then looked back across at her father. ‘Shouldn’t we get him to sign something, signifying his consent to this?’ she asked. ‘After all, his family may consider taking legal action if we leave him even more deluded in the head than he is at present.’

  ‘There’s only my parents,’ Matthew replied. ‘Plus a younger brother and sister.’

  ‘At least there are no wife and children left to grieve,’ she observed as she adjusted some sort of padded hinged platform under Matthew’s head, so that he was not lying completely flat.

  ‘Is the extract ready?’ Carlyle asked.

  Adelaide nodded. ‘It’s about ninety per cent purified and soluble enough for a mug of hot tea.’

  ‘Very well,’ Carlyle replied, seemingly to her. ‘Perhaps we’d better get started, before the Elephant Man makes his daily rounds.’

  ‘Who?’ Matthew asked.

  Carlyle appeared embarrassed. ‘Pardon my jest in bad taste, only there’s a persistent rumour of the ghost of the Elephant Man stalking the basement level in late afternoon and it’s now after three o’clock.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ Matthew persisted.

  Carlyle appeared to be too absorbed in emptying a spoonful of tea into a pot to give him a definitive answer. ‘Just a poor fairground freak suffering from a cursed birth who found sanctuary in here at some time in the past. He died two years ago, so forget about him — just another idle rumour born of unoccupied minds, like your plague pit victims. Anyway, time for your tea. I hope you take sugar, because this one’s loaded with it, to mask the taste of the Peyote. I want you to just lie back when you’ve drunk it and we’ll chat as if you just dropped in here to pass the time, while we wait to see if you suffer any ill effects. You’re a very stalwart young man and your faith must give you great reserves of courage.’

  ‘I don’t feel like a hero,’ Matthew admitted quietly as he downed the first of the tea.

  Adelaide gave him the benefit of a smile. ‘Heroes are simply braggarts with no imagination.’

  For the next half hour or so Carlyle chatted happily with Matthew about his career in medicine, beginning with a very unsatisfactory attachment to a Glasgow hospital, then a period in general practice in his native Dumfries before he obtained a teaching post at Queen’s College, Belfast. It was there that he met his wife, Kathleen, an aspiring writer who considered herself held back in her profession by the all-male literary citadel at whose walls she was always hammering with her papers on aspects of Irish history.

  In the belief that publishers in London would be more egalitarian in their commissioning of work on the basis of merit rather than the gender of the author, Kathleen had prevailed upon Carlyle to bring her and their infant daughter to the capital, where Carlyle was eagerly accepted onto the staff of the London Hospital, given his teaching experience and his developing skills in anatomising the dead. However, for Kathleen there had been nothing but endless rejections until she adopted the non de plume ‘Edward Villiers’.

  Then her career had taken off. ‘But success proved to be her ruin,’ Carlyle said sadly. ‘She burned herself out and so lowered her constitution that she was unable to overcome the Scarlatina that affected much of London at that time. There’s no known cure for it even now, but it’s normally only a disease that afflicts young children. I can only assume that she acquired it while teaching reading and writing to those children in the local Ragged School.’

  ‘The perils of “do-gooding”,’ Adelaide observed sourly, with a face to match the tone.

  Matthew smiled. ‘My own mother says much the same, on days when I’m “do-gooding”, as you choose to call it. “You’ll catch something horrible off those dirty wretches that you mix with down there”, is a frequent expression of hers, but it doesn’t stop me doing it, day after day.’

  ‘As I observed earlier,’ Adelaide replied, ‘a man with no imagination.’

  ‘Except for that “thing” in the corner,’ Matthew commented, eyes wide.

  Carlyle bent over him in an attempt to level his eyes with Matthew, in order to see whatever he was seeing. ‘Is the drug working?’ he asked eagerly.

  Matthew nodded. ‘I think it must be, for I can see the most peculiar creature in the corner over there. It has the body of a tall man, but the head of what appears to be an elephant. I’v
e seen them occasionally at the circus that we always went to when it was in town and I remember the long ears and curly snout, like a long pig’s tail.’

  ‘How is it dressed? Is it attempting to speak?’ Carlyle asked.

  Matthew shook his head. ‘No, it’s just smiling at me and I think I can see a tusk of some sort. As for the clothing, it seems to be wearing a long nightshirt, as if it were a patient in this hospital.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Carlyle whispered almost under his breath. ‘A clear example of auto-suggestion.’

  ‘I’m imagining this, aren’t I?’ Matthew asked.

  Carlyle assured him that he was. ‘But you’re aware of your surroundings? Nothing else in here’s different?’

  ‘Only your daughter,’ Matthew said. ‘She seems to have adopted the garb of a nun in holy orders.’

  ‘That confirms another suspicion,’ Carlyle chuckled. ‘Just lie back, relax as much as possible in the circumstances and let me know when the Elephant Man disappears from view. It shouldn’t take long, because I gave you a mild dose.’

  A few minutes later Matthew confirmed that his vision was back to normal and he was allowed to sit up. ‘Quite an experience,’ he said. ‘The funny thing is that I was aware of everything else around me being normal, apart from the two visions I saw.’

  ‘You certainly imagined me as a nun,’ Adelaide commented tersely. ‘Although convents have the advantage of being among the few places in which women are treated as equals, it’s still part of the Catholic establishment and all those with any authority in that are men.’

  ‘There are Anglican orders as well,’ Matthew told her.

  She shot him a look of disdain. ‘My mother belonged to that particular God club and I was dragged down there with depressing regularity, to listen to some fat old man with appalling breath trying to convince me that my only role in life was the bearing of little recruits for his religious enterprise.’

  ‘I think you two should choose to disagree regarding matters of religion,’ Carlyle told them as he finished searching in a cabinet drawer inside his glass-walled office and stepped out carrying a photograph that he stuck under Matthew’s nose. ‘Was that what you saw?’ he asked.

  Matthew stared at it for a moment, then looked away with an expression of horror and disgust. ‘No, thank goodness. What on earth is that?’

  ‘He was “The Elephant Man”,’ Carlyle told him gleefully. ‘His real name was Joseph Merrick and he had the misfortune to develop, during his formative years, those horrific deformities that caused you so much distress just now.’

  ‘Imagine what the poor soul must have endured, having to go abroad in public like that,’ Matthew sighed, genuinely moved.

  ‘If it’s any consolation,’ Carlyle told him, ‘he ended his days peacefully in this hospital, after we’d all prodded, poked and otherwise examined him. True it is that for some years he made a living of sorts from appearing in those awful “freak shows” that the less caring of our society frequent with depressing frequency, but then he was befriended by one of my fellow surgeons here at the London Hospital — a man named Frederick Treves. Thanks to the influence Treves had with the Trustees, we were able to get Merrick admitted to a private room where he lived out most of his days, until he died of asphyxia two years or so ago. It seems that the weight of his head was too much for him when he finally gave in to the temptation to lie down to sleep “like normal people”, as he described it. Treves conducted the anatomisation on him and I have no reason to doubt his diagnosis. We have his skeleton here in the hospital, but safely stored away from prying eyes.’

  ‘So you deliberately misled me when you spoke of his ghost stalking the basement down here?’ Matthew asked, beginning to understand Carlyle’s methods.

  ‘Indeed I did, my boy, for which I hope you will forgive me, but the results were more than worth the subterfuge.’

  ‘You caused me to see the man, you mean?’

  ‘No — quite the contrary,’ Carlyle grinned. ‘What you saw was your own mind’s interpretation of my words. I was very careful to minimise on detail, describing what you would see simply as “The Elephant Man”. Your brain did the rest and you saw what you expected to see — a normal man with an elephant’s head. What you saw was nothing like what you viewed in that photograph, was it?’

  ‘No, thank the good Lord,’ Matthew muttered. ‘But that surely only confirms what we knew already, does it not? That the visions conjured up by this drug are simply that — visions.’

  ‘It proves far more than that,’ Carlyle disagreed. ‘You saw what you expected to see — I could have fed you in advance with some story about a cow grazing on the ceiling and that would have been what you went on to see. Now apply that same process to the plague pit manifestations. A medium gives her intended victims a general idea of what they will see, then an accomplice later administers the drug. Ergo, the victim sees what their mind creates. I would place a large wager on the fact that were you to carefully interview, in minute detail, every one of those unfortunate dupes and ask them what precisely they saw, it would vary in detail from one to the other. Each of their minds drew a different picture of what the creatures from Hell looked like, just as if you were to sit a class of children down, each with pencil and sketchpad and ask them to draw an angel. Each angel would be different in detail, since it exists only in the mind of its creator.’

  ‘So we can now announce to the world that these plague pit phantoms are no more than a drug-induced illusion brought about by means of a cheap trick?’ Matthew suggested enthusiastically, to a soft groan from Adelaide and an amused smile from Carlyle.

  ‘We most certainly cannot. For one thing, we owe it to Inspector Jennings to allow him time in which to winkle out those responsible for this “cheap trick”, as you rightly describe it. People have died as a result, remember.’

  ‘But surely we already have them in custody?’ Matthew objected. ‘Sarah Barlowe and Bart Slater.’

  ‘These were merely the agents of someone much more motivated, much more organised and therefore much more dangerous. Why would those two grubby little street criminals want to scare the East End silly, not to mention ruining the trade of an established and ambitiously expanding, brewery?’

  ‘But Jennings is already hot on the tail of those who lay behind the plot.’

  ‘But he hasn’t yet caught them, has he? In any case, there are other very good reasons why I cannot simply go public with the fact that I have isolated a potentially dangerous new drug that is available from the right people. For one, it would simply create a general clamour in which everyone was seeking a supply, in order to manufacture a few dreams of their own — of beautiful women, or palatial surroundings, or even a square meal. Secondly, I would be exciting criticism from the several professional associations of which I am a proud member for conducting back-street experiments without adequate safeguards or controls in place. And finally, as you might appreciate for yourself, if we were to reveal what we have just done, we would be invited to disassociate ourselves from the Charity Organisation Society, under suspicion of dabbling in the Black Arts.’

  ‘Then what do we do next?’

  ‘For the immediate future we resort to my home in Hackney for a well-deserved early supper.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Of course “we”. I cannot let you roam freely with that poison still in your system. It has the power to cause you to have other visions long after its first effects have worn off, remember? If that is to happen, I would rather that you were under my supervision and care when it does.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘But nothing. I will send my coachman to your home in Clerkenwell with a message for your family that you will be our overnight guest. You are approximately my size and would, I believe, fit easily into one of my nightshirts and we have a choice of spare rooms. The one next to mine, for preference, in case you call out in the night.’

  ‘I have matters to attend to in the morning,’ Matthew objected. />
  ‘And do you think we do not?’ Carlyle replied. ‘Please accept our warm invitation to be our guest for the evening.’

  9

  ‘I gather that the library you went to in order to learn about that drug was founded by a relative of yours,’ Matthew said by way of a conversation opener as Carlyle carved several slices from the lamb roast that his cook had left for supper.

  Carlyle nodded. ‘Correct. My uncle, as it happens. You may have heard of him — Thomas Carlyle?’

  ‘The philosopher?’

  ‘The very man. My father’s older brother and the man who finally persuaded me — if you will forgive my forthrightness — that religion is a lot of hot air that has all but ruined the world.’

  There was a faint ‘here, here’ from Adelaide as she dug aggressively into her lamb and Matthew opted not to argue. Instead he continued with his original line of thought. ‘How were you able to learn about that Mexican cactus thing — what is it called again?’

  ‘“Peyote”. The London Library has this city’s finest collection of books, and employs an excellent cataloguer who has devised a revolutionary indexing system. Thanks to that I became aware of certain diaries kept by an American botanist called de Groot, who explored the southern regions of that country and was introduced to the local natives and their customs. One of these is an annual dance ritual when all the branches of the tribe come together and consume Peyote before exhausting themselves in frenzied gyrations.’

  ‘Referring back to your uncle, did he influence you as a younger man — apart, that is, from putting you off religion?’

  ‘Perhaps not as much as he would have wished,’ Carlyle said. ‘Had it been left to him I would have made a study of the history of mankind and the moral bankruptcy of commerce, both of which were pet topics of his. It was his philosophy that mankind progresses through the efforts of great men who are put into this world to lead and guide us.’